In most companies these departments behave like independent silos, resulting in excessive costs and unhappy customers and investors. But in fact all departments must understand finance and how their own department's performance can affect the bottom line, and financial managers must know how the other working departments can improve results. Linking financial with the other departments gives financial a better understanding of operations and provides a measure of the status and effectiveness of the company.

Quality Management Systems help control business risk, provide added resources for internal auditing, help reduce the cost of regulatory compliance and improve company leadership. The result is a culture change from management by fear, to management by cooperation and recorded facts.

Many successful companies hire a consultant as their business analyst if they are without internal knowledgeable employees. Successful analysts have attributes that cannot be taught. They are strong, dynamic, confident teachers, communicators and leaders with exceptional understanding and empathy. A good analyst can help coordinate efforts of company managers and field service personnel; they install proven methods, systems, controls and incentives to enable customers to manage positive cash flow, control costs, and help accelerate growth of their company.

A business analyst should be able to analyze a customer's business and determine the financial impact of ownership decision-making, company structure, business planning and industry benchmarking. At the conclusion of the analysis, the business analyst and the customer will decide if it makes sense to move into the implementation phase, utilizing the resources of both parties.

About the author: Lewis Yasenchak works as a consultant with small-to-mid sized processors, moldmakers and other precision manufacturers to help them "implement quality at the source" rather than catch mistakes once made, and also to minimize waste by meeting and exceeding ISO Quality Management Systems. He invites you to contact him to help demonstrate the impact quality can have on your operations. Contact him at T: 706-694-2977 or [email protected]. Also contact him for free information on "Creating and Sustaining a Compliant Quality Management System for Multiple Regulatory Environments."